The vocabulary, decoded.

A digital marketplace where advertisers and publishers buy and sell ad space in real-time auctions. Major exchanges: Google AdX, Microsoft Xandr, Magnite. Every programmatic impression is bought and sold through one.

A company that aggregates ad inventory from many publishers and resells it to advertisers. The original middleman of digital advertising. Largely replaced by exchanges and DSPs, though some still exist for niche inventory.

The technology that physically delivers your ad creative to a webpage when it's been selected to run. Tracks impressions, clicks, and viewability. Major examples: Google Campaign Manager, Sizmek.

A specific position on a webpage or app where an ad can appear. Defined by size (e.g., 300×250), format (display, video), and location (top, sidebar, in-content).

A way for different software systems to talk to each other. In programmatic, APIs let advertisers integrate their CRM data, conversion tracking, and reporting tools with their DSP automatically.

The process of figuring out which marketing touchpoints led to a conversion. Last-click attribution credits the final click. Multi-touch attribution distributes credit across all touchpoints. The hardest problem in marketing measurement.

A group of users a campaign targets. Defined by behavior (visited a website), demographics (women 25–45), interests (sports fans), or context (currently reading about cars).

A campaign focused on building brand recognition rather than driving immediate clicks or conversions. Measured in impressions, reach, and frequency. Common formats: display, video, CTV.

An image-based ad that appears in a designated slot on a webpage. Standard sizes include 300×250 (medium rectangle), 728×90 (leaderboard), and 160×600 (skyscraper). The most common ad format on the open web.

The price an advertiser is willing to pay for a single ad impression in a real-time auction. Submitted by the DSP based on targeting match, predicted performance, and budget pacing — all in under 100 milliseconds.

Making sure your ad doesn't appear next to content that would damage your brand — adult content, hate speech, fake news, violent material. Verified by third-party vendors like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify.

The percentage of visitors who land on your page and leave without taking any action. A high bounce rate from ad traffic usually means a mismatch between the ad's promise and the landing page's content.

Software that aggregates first-party customer data from multiple sources (website, email, CRM) into a unified profile. Used to build audiences for targeting and personalization.

A defined action you want a user to take — buy something, sign up, request a demo, download a file. The unit of success for performance campaigns. Tracked via pixels or APIs.

Small data files browsers store about user activity. First-party cookies come from the site you're visiting. Third-party cookies come from advertisers and trackers. Third-party cookies are being phased out across browsers.

Total ad spend divided by the number of conversions. The honest number of what each new customer cost you. Lower is better, but the right CPA depends on your customer lifetime value.

The cost of one click on your ad. Calculated as total spend divided by total clicks. True CPC uses your full budget (including platform fees), which is the number that actually matters for finance.

The cost of 1,000 ad impressions. ("Mille" is Latin for thousand.) The standard pricing unit for display, video, and most other programmatic formats. Display average: $2–$8. Video: $15–$40.

The actual ad — the image, video, headline, or text that gets shown to users. Independent of targeting and bidding logic. Strong creative often matters more than smart targeting.

The percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it. Calculated as clicks ÷ impressions. Display average: 0.05–0.10%. Native: 0.30–0.80%. Retargeting: 0.50%+.

Television viewing through internet-connected devices — Roku, Apple TV, smart TVs, gaming consoles. Includes streaming services like Hulu, Tubi, and Pluto. The fastest-growing programmatic category.

Showing ads based on the content of the page rather than the user's profile. A running shoe ad on a marathon-training blog. Increasingly important as cookies disappear.

Software that collects, organizes, and segments audience data — both first-party (your data) and third-party (purchased data). Used to build targetable audiences for DSPs.

A unique identifier for a private programmatic deal between a specific advertiser and publisher. Used to access premium inventory at negotiated prices, outside the open auction.

Targeting users based on age, gender, household income, education, marital status. A useful filter when layered on top of other targeting; less useful as a primary lever.

Image-based ads on websites — banners, rectangles, skyscrapers. The original digital advertising format and still the largest by volume.

Programmatic advertising on digital billboards, transit screens, retail displays, and elevator screens. A small but growing category that brings programmatic logic to physical-world advertising.

Software advertisers use to buy ad inventory across multiple ad exchanges in real time. Handles audience targeting, bidding logic, fraud protection, and creative serving. Major DSPs: The Trade Desk, DV360, Xandr, StackAdapt.

Automatically tailoring ad creative to each user — different products, prices, or messages based on browsing history or audience segment. Common in retail and e-commerce.

The actual cost per 1,000 impressions including all fees. Calculated as (total spend ÷ impressions) × 1,000. Often higher than the bid CPM because it includes platform fees and any data costs.

Short for ad exchange. The marketplace where DSPs (buyers) and SSPs (sellers) connect to run real-time auctions for ad impressions.

The percentage of users who take any action with an ad — click, hover, expand, watch a video. Broader than CTR. Useful for video and rich-media formats where simple clicks don't capture interest.

Information your business collects directly from your customers — email signups, purchase history, website behavior. The most valuable kind of audience data because it's accurate, current, and unique to you.

Fake traffic generated by bots or click farms to steal advertiser budgets. Estimated to cost the industry billions annually. Modern DSPs and verification vendors detect most fraud automatically.

The average number of times the same user sees your ad. Industry standard for display campaigns is 3 impressions per user. Too low = forgotten. Too high = annoying. Frequency cap limits this.

The minimum price a publisher will accept for an ad impression. Bids below the floor don't win the auction. Set by the SSP on behalf of the publisher.

Targeting users when they enter a specific geographic area — a 1-mile radius around your storefront, a competitor's location, a stadium during a game. Powerful for local businesses and competitive conquesting.

Showing ads only to users in specific geographic areas — countries, states, cities, ZIP codes, or radii around an address. The cheapest way to filter out irrelevant impressions.

The total amount spent on a campaign before any rebates, discounts, or fees are deducted. The starting number for most agency contracts and the basis for percentage-of-spend pricing.

A technique where publishers offer ad inventory to multiple exchanges simultaneously before calling Google's ad server. Increases publisher revenue by creating real competition among demand sources. Standard practice on most major sites.

A measurement technique where a portion of your audience is intentionally not shown ads, to measure incremental lift versus those who saw ads. The gold standard for attribution but requires significant scale.

The trade organization that sets standards for digital advertising — ad sizes, viewability definitions, reporting formats, fraud measurement. Most industry benchmarks come from IAB research.

A single instance of your ad being shown to a user. The fundamental unit of programmatic advertising. CPM pricing is based on cost per 1,000 impressions.

The conversions that happened because of your ads, not the ones that would have happened anyway. Measured by comparing exposed audiences to control groups. The honest version of attribution.

The available ad space on a publisher's site or app, expressed in available impressions. Publishers sell their inventory; advertisers buy it. Quality varies dramatically — premium publishers vs. long-tail sites.

Showing ads to users based on their IP address — useful for targeting specific companies (B2B), households, or geographic areas. Less precise than cookie-based targeting but more privacy-friendly.

The specific metric you're optimizing toward in a campaign. Common KPIs: cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, click-through rate, viewable impressions. The KPI determines everything about how the campaign should be structured.

The page users arrive at after clicking your ad. Strong landing pages match the ad's promise, load fast, and have a clear next action. Often more important than the ad itself.

The first 7–14 days of a campaign when the platform's algorithm is still figuring out which audiences and inventory perform best. Performance during the learning phase is not representative of long-term campaign performance.

An audience built by finding users similar to your existing customers, based on shared behavior and characteristics. Useful for prospecting but only as good as the seed audience you start with.

Websites that exist primarily to serve ads, with low-quality or AI-generated content. Real users see them, but engagement is poor. The ANA estimated 14% of programmatic spend lands on these. Modern DSPs filter most out.

Ads that appear inside mobile applications (rather than mobile web browsers). Includes banners, interstitials, and rewarded video. A large category with its own targeting and measurement quirks.

Ads designed to match the visual style and editorial flow of the surrounding content — sponsored articles, in-feed promotions, recommended-content placements. Higher engagement than banners, especially on mobile.

The amount actually paid for media inventory, after agency fees, platform fees, and other costs are deducted from gross spend. Sometimes called "working media."

A real-time bidding marketplace open to all advertisers. The default model for most programmatic buying. Contrasts with private marketplaces (PMPs), which require pre-arranged access.

Coordinating advertising across multiple channels — display, video, CTV, audio, social, search — into a unified strategy. The buzzword version of "advertise everywhere your customer is."

The ongoing process of improving campaign performance — adjusting bids, swapping creative, refining audiences, reallocating budget. Modern DSPs handle most optimization automatically.

How a campaign spends its budget over time. Even pacing spreads spend evenly across the campaign duration. Front-loaded spends fast early. ASAP spends as fast as possible.

A small piece of tracking code installed on your website that records visitors and conversions. Required for retargeting. Usually a single line of JavaScript pasted into your site's header.

A pre-arranged programmatic deal between specific advertisers and publishers, with negotiated pricing and inventory. Higher quality than open auctions; used for premium placements.

An ad that opens in a new browser window behind the active one. Visible when the user closes their main tab. Highest cost-efficiency for mass reach; best suited to consumer offers and entertainment categories.

A video ad that plays before the main video content. The default format for video advertising on platforms like YouTube and most CTV services.

The automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory in real-time auctions. Covers display, video, CTV, audio, native, and DOOH. Accounts for over 90% of digital display spending in the US.

Targeting new audiences who haven't engaged with your brand yet — the opposite of retargeting. Typically uses lookalike audiences, contextual targeting, or demographic filters.

Anyone with audience attention they want to monetize through ads — websites, apps, video platforms, podcasts. Programmatic's selling side.

The number of unique people who saw your ad at least once. Different from impressions — 1,000 impressions to one person is 1,000 impressions but only 1 reach. Calculated as impressions divided by frequency.

The auction mechanism that powers programmatic advertising. Each ad impression is sold to the highest bidder in less than 100 milliseconds. The technological foundation of the entire industry.

Showing ads to people who already visited your website. The single highest-ROI targeting method in programmatic. Conversion rates run 3–10× any other approach. Requires a pixel installed on your site.

Revenue generated divided by ad spend. 4:1 ROAS means every $1 spent returned $4 in revenue. The most common e-commerce KPI.

Software that lets advertisers run programmatic campaigns directly, without an agency. Adlo is one. The category that opened programmatic to small and mid-sized businesses.

Software publishers use to sell their ad inventory across multiple ad exchanges. The mirror image of a DSP. Major SSPs: Magnite, OpenX, PubMatic.

An auction where the winner pays one cent more than the second-highest bidder, not their full bid amount. Was the default in programmatic for years. Largely replaced by first-price auctions in recent years.

A defined group of users with shared characteristics — "high-income suburban dads," "users who visited the pricing page," "people who searched for hiking gear." The building blocks of audience targeting.

Your brand's portion of total ad impressions in a specific category. If five running shoe brands run ads and you have 20% SOV, you're getting one-fifth of category impressions.

The rules that determine who sees your ad. Programmatic supports four main types: retargeting, location, contextual, and demographic. Smart campaigns layer multiple methods.

Audience information collected by data providers (not by you or the publisher) and sold to advertisers. Quality varies wildly. Becoming less reliable as cookies disappear.

The operational work of uploading creative, configuring targeting, and launching a campaign. Used to take agencies hours per campaign; modern self-serve platforms reduce this to minutes.

The IAB standard for video ad delivery. Specifies how video ads are served, tracked, and reported across different video players and platforms. If you've made a video ad, you've encountered VAST.

Ad formats featuring moving images and audio — pre-roll, mid-roll, outstream, CTV. Higher CPMs ($15–$40 for display video) but premium attention. The largest programmatic category by spend.

Whether an ad was actually visible on a user's screen. IAB standard: at least 50% of the ad in view for at least 1 second (or 2 seconds for video). Many impressions paid for are never actually viewed.

An advertising ecosystem where the platform owns both the audience data and the ad delivery — Meta, Google, Amazon. Powerful because of the data, but you can't use that audience anywhere else.

The portion of your ad budget that actually reaches the ad. After agency fees, platform fees, data fees, and verification fees, only a fraction is left. The ANA found typical working media is 44% of spend; Adlo's flat-fee structure delivers 80%.